spoke to our experience as a people, having been strangers in strange lands over many centuries, most recently in America, too. Reform CA joined the immigration reform battle. ♦♦♦ Now that Reform CA was on board, how would our broader coalition achieve justice for California’s undocumented residents? In March 2013, 70 California rabbis packed a room at the CCAR conference in Long Beach to develop a strategy for the TRUST Act’s passage, then broke out into seven CA regions to co-plan local campaigns. An 18-person rabbinic and lay leadership team would craft statewide strategies and motivate rabbis and congregants to engage in the cause. A month later, inspired by a Reform CA Passover supplement that asked Reform Jews to share their families’ own immigration stories at the seder table and then lobby their representatives in support of today’s immigrants, hundreds of Jews began sending letters to state legislators and Governor Brown. Rabbis and lay leaders met face-to-face with local Assembly representatives, delivering a message rooted in shared values, such as maintaining families and upholding religious teachings to protect the stranger. Reform leaders also wrote editorials published in local papers. “Unless the Passover story has a modern meaning,” Rabbi David Frank of Temple Solel wrote in the San Diego Union-Tribune, “unless it moves us to act on behalf of those who are still strangers…it is not a story that bears retelling anymore….As it happens, we do know the power and meaning of this story, for in our country there are 11 million undocumented immigrants yearning for a life of hope and freedom…what so many of us already have.” Meanwhile, every Thursday, Reform CA leaders participated in strategic conference calls with our coalition partners, among them the National Day Laborers Organizing Network, Asian Americans Advancing Justice, and People Inspiring Communities through Organizing (a broad coalition across lines of class, race, and faith). We shared individual group strategies and discussed goals we could achieve together, such as persuading a
particular district representative to support the TRUST Act by determining together the best person(s) to meet with that representative. It also turned out that, thanks to the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, Reform CA had the coalition’s most technologically advanced system to facilitate citizen call-ins to their political representatives, complete with talking points and a one-button push to reach the right legislators. We shared the technology with our partners, who translated the English text into Spanish (press 2 for Espanol) and engaged their constituents in a calling campaign. On May 16, 2013 the TRUST Act passed the Assembly by a 44–22 vote. ♦♦♦ The next goal was passage in the state Senate. The California State Sheriffs Association had been lobbying Governor Brown strongly against the bill. After its passage in the Assembly, the governor sat down with bill author Assembly Member Tom Ammiano to introduce amendments he said would be necessary for him to sign it, among them adding misdemeanors and prior immigration violations to the list of crimes necessitating deportation. Reform CA and our coalition partners knew we had to act. Whichever bill the state Senate passed would be the final legislation making its way to the governor’s office for signature. We needed to uphold a fair and just version of the bill, one that would protect people that had done nothing more than sell food without a license to support their families. In May, 50 Reform Jews from across the state made their way to the Senate floor to meet with more than 30 legislators, including Senate Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg and bill author Ammiano. Steinberg, a supporter of the TRUST Act, told the delegation of lay leaders and rabbis that before meeting with them, he had not considered how these amendments might unfairly affect the immigrant community, but he understood now. Another senator, spotting the group (some wore yarmulkes), asked what had brought them to the capitol. He was surprised to hear “immigration” and not “Israel.” “Is immigration a Jewish issue?” he asked. Rabbi Lawrence Raphael from reform judaism
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Congregation Sherith Israel in San Francisco quickly replied, “We believe it is,” explaining the biblical imperative to care for the stranger in our midst and the Jewish people’s long struggle for full inclusion under the law. One month later, more than 100 Reform clergy signed a letter to Governor Brown, delivered by hand, asking him to sign a bill with fair and just language. Reform CA leaders and our coalition partners then adapted the letter for a several-hundred-strong phone campaign to the governor’s office. ♦♦♦ On September 9, 2013, right before Rosh Hashanah, the state Senate passed the TRUST Act containing the very language we wanted. The bill was then moved to the governor’s desk for signature. He had until October 13 to sign or veto it. (If he did nothing, it would become law without his signature.) Immediately we took action. Our coalition partners initiated calls to the governor and staged a sit-in in his office. Reform CA launched a High Holy Day campaign, asking California Reform rabbis to preach or teach texts on immigration and the TRUST Act. Dozens of rabbis made this issue their central message, urging congregants to phone Governor Brown, ask him to sign the TRUST Act, and say “Shanah Tovah.” More than 1,000 Reform Jews made the calls. Among the rabbis who spoke about immigration to a packed sanctuary was Rabbi Ken Chasen of Leo Baeck Temple in Los Angeles. One of his congregants listening in the pews had a relationship with Governor Brown. Fired up by Rabbi Chasen’s sermon, the congregant quickly arranged a conference call with the governor, Rabbi Chasen, and himself. During their conversation, Rabbi Chasen told the governor that dozens of rabbis throughout California had preached about the TRUST Act on one of the holiest days of the Jewish year: “Up and down the state of California, Reform Jews care deeply about the immigrants in their midst”—a message reinforced by 1,000+ phone calls. ♦♦♦ On October 5, 2013, Governor Jerry Brown signed the TRUST Act into law.
spring 2014
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